


Know Thy Enemy

by meanoldauthor



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:48:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanoldauthor/pseuds/meanoldauthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Curious about his enemy, Ulysses stalks the Courier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Know Thy Enemy

_"A package courier found shot in the head near Goodsprings has reportedly regained consciousness..."_

_"Tops hotel owner Benny has been killed by an unidentified assailant…”_

_"The NCR flag has been hoisted over former Legion outpost Nelson …”_

The Mojave was changing. Even without the radios, there were rumors around campfires, stories traded by caravans. A courier, they said. A woman, a mad, wild thing with no allegiance or flag. Others said she was House’s tool, his hands and eyes. More said no, she was from the West, an NCR woman to the bone. All agreed she was rabid when faced with Legion, and told hushed stories of Nipton.

They grew more frequent and lurid as Ulysses passed through the settled areas around New Vegas. The awe on some of the speakers sickened him. If they knew what she was capable of, the things she had done, they would be telling different tales indeed. The Bear was making its presence felt, even more than before he had left to find the Big Empty. He had his answers to carry to the Divide, and it gave him comfort to know it would not last. There was a bitter satisfaction in knowing all the Courier was working towards would be his to end.

Night was falling, but it gave him no pause. He had work to be done and little enough time to do it in. The road was quiet, and he may have been the only man in the world, except…

There was a loud, unladylike guffaw ahead. A pair of figures crested the hill before him, briefly silhouetted against the sky. One was unfamiliar, wearing a beret that made him one of the Bear’s soldiers. The other… Ulysses hadn’t followed her long, that first trip to the Divide, and kept a safe distance. But he knew that voice, the set of her shoulders, the way she walked.

The Courier and her partner were headed north, across his own path. He hesitated. He had to cut trails through the Divide, see if there was anything to salvage there, and prepare. Days, weeks of work. She would keep without knowing he was there, and yet, yet…

Knowing he was a fool, Ulysses moved to pace them from the shadows. For history’s sake, he would follow her again, before she followed him. Once.

They remained oblivious as the night came in earnest, coming to rest on a ridge outside Bitter Springs. They spoke a moment, gestures solemn. She nodded to the soldier before turning away, disappearing on the further side of the ridge. He stayed on guard, looking back towards the camp. Curious, Ulysses circled the area. Strange place to stay for the night, specific. They were waiting for something.

Ah. There were sounds on the breeze of a group ahead, and a raiding party came into view. Legion. Recruits and decani, lightly armed, there to take the easy targets in the refugee camp. They began to break up, moving in groups towards Bitter Springs. Something in him twisted. He should warn them. There were two people against an entire raiding force, but he knew the Courier was more formidable than she seemed. These were his brothers, still, even misguided and used. But the Legionaries moved past him, unseen.

He closed his eyes. No. Whatever happened here was moot, in the end.

She was waiting. He heard rather than saw the first shots, and he hung back to avoid being caught in the crossfire. The approach to the camp came into view, and she was wading into her approaching foes, swinging a hammer nearly as tall as herself as though it were nothing. It was fast, brutal work, and she ignored the blows against her, simply smashing her way through her attackers.

It was vicious. He hurt on their behalf, seeing them fall with their bodies crushed. It was ugly. Light from the camp caught her face, teeth bared and eyes hard.

It was enthralling.

She and her companion were the last ones standing. A few people holding makeshift weapons stepped timidly out of the camp, and she raised a hand. _Go back,_ the gesture said. _You are safe._

The Courier rested the hammer on her shoulder and headed back down the path. He should leave. The Divide was calling him. But…Maybe it would be worth following her, to be sure of what he was up against. Maybe.

He shook his head. _Fool_. He knew what he faced. She was one woman, strong, clever, but mortal and lone.

Yet…

She was out of sight by the time he moved to pick up her trail.

\--

At a fork in the road, the Courier shook hands with her companion, too distant to hear their words. She held on a long moment, clapping her other hand on his shoulder before they parted ways. They both watched him go, and she put her hand on her hip, looking up at the sky. Nodding decisively, she turned towards the south, New Vegas proper. She stayed alert as she walked, checking to her sides and the path ahead for threats. More wary, then, than in the past. Ulysses had walked nearly in her footsteps as he followed her to the Divide, years ago. Now he was forced to keep his distance, following by glimpses and guesswork based on the roads.

Not much of a challenge, not here. He still found himself enjoying it.

She led him into Fiend territory as the sun rose. They had outgrown the Vault they had claimed, roaming further since he had left the Mojave. It made sense enough, he thought with disgust. He had found used needles and bottles on her path before. Was this how Vegas would meet its end, then? Not with fire, but a slow decline as its ‘leader’ drugged herself into oblivion?

The Fiends at the edges of the ruins were too far gone from chems to notice either of them approaching, and the Courier drew a pistol, needling the nearest of them into charging. She ducked to cover, waiting until they were in range to round the corner with a shotgun. More heard, and were pulled into the bloody game of hunt-and-find. She advanced as she cut them down, forcing her way deep into the ruins and drawing out more heavily armed opponents.

Ulysses kept back, not wanting to force his hand in the confines of the fallen buildings. Finding a vantage point, he watched a gout of flame arc over the walls. The Fiend leader, the slaver, the monster—no one went through New Vegas without being warned of him. The gunfire ended, and he imagined that hammer coming into play. Spotting motion through a gap, he saw an armored figure crash to the ground.

Not dealing in chems, then. He moved to drop from his perch when the Courier stepped into view. She kicked the Fiend’s boot, hand on her gun, but he stayed limp. She recoiled as she knelt beside the corpse, waving a hand in front of her face before taking a knife to his neck.

Collecting bounty, then? Mercenary work, rather than justice. It suited her. She dropped the severed head in her satchel and stood abruptly, looking behind her. Her knife was still in hand as she stepped behind a wall.

Enough. He had the measure of her, and this could end. They would meet on his terms, later, and he could…

Voices, from the ruins. He pressed back into a shadow, watching. The Courier passed him, too distracted to notice. A ragged man was following her, and on her hip was a child. He was too old to be carried in such a way, but so frail it made no difference. She reached up to brush his hair back from his forehead, a small, unthinking gesture. She nearly missed a step. Ulysses saw a flash of surprise and pain cross her face, gone in a breath.

He stayed where he was, letting them pass. That look… Her hair was more shot with gray than before, the weather on her face clearer. That had been a younger woman’s pain, some history gone. One he did not know.

_One that didn’t matter,_ he tried to remind himself, but the thought was quiet. She had built the Divide, and killed it. _That_ was all that mattered.

Yet…

Perhaps it would be prudent to know more.

\--

Men trapped in Vault 34 called her their savior.

Power returned to the areas surrounding New Vegas, and even the squatters had light to huddle in at night.

The Followers had more hands working, and she kept returning with armfuls of supplies.

He stayed in her shadow, watching the Mojave change in her wake. He watched, waited, knowing she would slip. Some careless act, and it would all fall apart. Ulysses had seen her do it before. Even with these best intentions, it would fall. Then… Then she would understand what she had done.

He had watched her for days, sweeping changes taking hold as she traveled at House’s behest. Whenever she left the grand, ostentatious tower, her face was clouded, bitter, but she did his bidding. She pacified the Boomers at his command, forced the Khans to sever their Legion alliance, and a hundred other things that left people whispering of hope behind her.

But now, she had given some order to a pair of children in Freeside, who had run. He dared to draw closer, apparently nothing more than a thug down a side alley. She had nearly spotted him once, stopping dead on the road and circling back over her own trail, missing him by mere feet. He was more cautious now, but too curious to leave it alone. One of the children ran past him, arms full of…bottles?

She pointed them down the alley, setting the bottles on a low wall. With a flourish, she drew a small rifle from her back. The Courier showed each of them how to stand and settle the butt of the gun, to look down the sights before handing it to the girl. This was part of her grand scheme? Teaching children?

She laughed and clapped her hands as one of the bottles fell. For the first time since he had tailed her, there was joy in her smile.

This…woman had killed one of the last hopes in the entire wasteland.

She poked the boy in the belly, making him let out the breath he was holding, and the girl giggled.

The Courier, who had killed Caesar, was on the brink of being declared terrorist by the NCR, who had nearly killed _him_ …

…was teaching two orphans to shoot in a back alley, a softly sad look on her face as she watched them.

She was death, a brutal end to those who threatened her. He had seen her fight, and it shamed him to think that he enjoyed how she moved, her ferocity. But how she worked to build and restore, nearly as quickly as she tore down her opposition.

And those hands turned kind when she found those who couldn’t, or wouldn’t fight. He watched as she gently corrected and guided the children, more of the bottles falling. When the ammunition ran dry, she gave the boy a sideways hug and tousled the girl’s hair before waving them off. She shook her head and turned away from them, still smiling to herself.

He wanted to hate her. He wanted to ask her what drove her. He wanted to see her suffer as he had in the Divide, see her lose everything she had worked towards as she had done to him. He wanted to know her history, to hear it from her own lips, to hear her say that she had learned and the Mojave would rebuild under her protection. He wanted her at his mercy, begging. He wanted to be at hers.

She had spotted him, and was measuring the distance, a hand on the butt of the pistol. Ulysses pushed away from the wall, turning his back on her. Who she was _did not matter_. What she had _done_ was the issue. If she wanted to rebuild Vegas? She would face what she had wrought. And doing so, she would earn this new home. Prove she could hold it.

And if she could not, if at the last she disappointed him, vengeance would be done.

\--

The death of House was broadcast across the wasteland, reaching even deep in the Divide. Ulysses turned away halfway through reading, scornful. The man was so intent on hanging on where he wasn’t needed, of course he couldn’t resist getting in the last word. No coincidence, his death now. Two hundred years of survival, and dying in the midst of a war? Assassination, surely, with either side to blame.

He stepped away from the consoles, stretching. Maybe not either side. House would have had defenses, so someone nearer to him would be a more obvious choice. Damn her. Things would be drawing to an end soon, and he had only just gotten this Old World temple running again. He should have come here sooner, beginning his work in the silo and keeping her from… _confusing_ things further.

His work slowed throughout the day, distracted. How would she come to him? Cautious and seeking answers, seeking reason? She was curious, insatiably so, but he doubted it would hold so deep in the ashes. A respected equal, maybe? One courier to another, who had walked their halves of the world? Ulysses looked up at the silo, machinery working to bring the first of the warheads to bear behind the Old World flag. No, not Courier Six. At the end of a long, grueling road, with this threat over her and the Mojave… She would come down on him with all her wrath, impetuous, uncaring, more force of nature than mortal woman.

He paused at the thought. The two couriers, at the end of the world, and the depth of blood between them. No matter how it ended, that was a history to be spoken long into the future.

Yet…

His work here was nearly done, and perhaps a final trip to the Mojave for…perspective would not hurt.

\--

For all her better points, the Courier could be sadly predictable.

In only a few days, he had seen her return to the Goodsprings wells to rest many times, sitting near one of the fires, lost in thought. Tonight was hardly different. She had stretched out with her head on her pack—a new one, since she had killed the Fiend—and the flap pulled over her eyes. The hammer was laid out beside her, and she cradled the shotgun in her arms. Several empty bottles were scattered at her side. From the ledge he stood on, he could hear her snoring slightly.

Ulysses approached her slowly, careful to not even let his duster brush the ground as he sat. Pointlessly, maybe; she seemed dead to the world. He studied her, the low light of the embers throwing the frown on her face into deeper shadow. Did she doubt herself? Regret her choice, putting House to the blade? He recalled how grudgingly she came and went from his tower, acted in her interest rather than his on her errands. It was not celebration, certainly, that drove her here. Ulysses had not seen her revel in another’s death, though she took satisfaction.

She shifted in her sleep, twisting onto her side and hugging her weapon tighter. She would not serve the Bear, despised the Bull. He rested his chin on a fist as realization struck. Whatever happened to Vegas… she wanted it to be _hers_.

Did she fear it? How small she seemed, curled up by a fire, hiding from her choices. She had changed since he met her last, but her recklessness, her foolishness would doom them all.

He thought of her in Freeside, her quiet pleasure as she passed knowledge on to the children there. The way she looked on in pain at the poor, the broken. Had she the strength to defend all of them?

In his mind’s eye, he saw the Temple, the spears of the Old World woken, only waiting on his word. The people of the Mojave, the children, the innocent, the ones fighting to survive…

Had _he_ the strength to test _her?_

He turned his gaze away, bitter. She had shown no such compassion for those in the Divide. He would show none to her adopted home.

Ulysses pushed himself up onto a knee, leaning over the Courier. Carefully, so lightly he barely touched her skin, he passed a hand across her cheek. Soon, she would seek him out. She would hate him for what he would do, and rightly.

She pulled away from the caress, and he froze. Rather than wake, her head rolled back, and she began to snore in earnest. Standing, he took one last look at her, taking her in.

He turned away, until they would meet again at the edge of the world.


End file.
